Imagine this scenario for a second: three upper-class black college students are falsely accused of a heinous crime. Despite an overwhelming preponderance of evidence indicating their innocence, local prosecutors make no effort to see the facts in the case. Instead, they simply treat the case as closed and the pending imprisonment of the alleged perpetrators as inevitable and necessary. Media outlets and public opinion uniformly condemn the alleged assailants without affording them due process of law or a trial by jury; the alleged criminals, heretofore without criminal records, are left with their reputations in irredeemable pieces and are made national pariahs well before the judicial process has run its course.
However, when the truth is finally revealed, and the testimony of the three young black men is vindicated by the evidentiary facts and by the renunciation of the accuser's own accusations, there is still no outrage over the pervasive injustices that had just occurred. There is no legal defense fund established in the name of the falsely accused black men, and they are not portrayed as national heroes, cultural martyrs, or symbols of a racial divide.
On the contrary, they are still looked at with contempt and scorn because of their upper-class standing and privileged upbringing, and their accuser, far-from being labeled the liar and fraud that she was revealed to be, is coddled by the press and not prosecuted for systematically lying in an attempt to extort money from those she falsely accused.
So, does this scenario sound at all familiar? Probably not, because the three Duke Lacrosse players who were vilified last spring while being falsely accused of rape by a stripper were white, and not black. As a result, there was no national outrage over a purported miscarriage of justice, activist college students did not rally in the name of the "Duke 3," and, thankfully, those selfless champions of civil rights Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton - the dumb and dumber of the black victimhood movement - did not make the case their raison d'etre. There is not a direct parallel between the facts and the circumstances of the Duke Rape Case and the Jena 6 ordeal that this campus cares so much about, but what laborious examination of the two cases reveals is the ever-widening racially motivated double standard with which the liberal media and, in turn, society at-large view victims of institutional injustice.
If it is a rich white college kid who gets screwed by the system, then we, despite his accuser's claims lacking the slightest bit of veracity, collectively take a sick pleasure in watching his life come crumbling down around him. We somehow rationalize the wrong that has been committed by saying "Well, his parents can afford a good attorney anyway," or worse, "He has been privileged his whole life, let him learn what it is like to in the real world."
However, when there appears to be a poor, Southern, black victim of injustice, the liberal exploiters of racial tension are quick to act with vulture-like efficiency and precision, in the interest of their own pocketbooks and to the detriment of the minority population that they so condescendingly profess to serve.
What has transpired in Jena, La., over the past year is expressive of ignorance, racism, and a failure of enlightened leadership all coalescing in a brutally destructive way to reveal something deeply disturbing about that part of the country, and maybe our country as a whole. However, the fact remains that Donald Washington, a black U.S. attorney from Louisiana, has said unequivocally that there was no connection between the original noose hangings and the 6-on-1 beating that resulted in the prosecution of the six black students-turned-martyrs.
"A lot of things happened between the noose hanging and the fight occurring, and we have arrived at the conclusion that the fight itself had no connection," said Washington.
Further, Mychal Bell - one of the central characters of this overly sensationalized made-for-Hollywood story - is, far from being the beacon of civic and community sainthood that so many have made him out to be, actually a repeat-offending juvenile delinquent already convicted of assault and malicious destruction of property.
This is the side of the story that the Jesse Jacksons, Al Sharptons and Katie Courics won't tell us about, simply because it is a reality that rains on their little parade of perfect racial theatre. We know that Jackson and Sharpton routinely get involved in these types of ordeals in their own self-interest. And, appreciatively, most credible black leaders and intellectuals long-ago renounced the right of these two clowns to lead African-Americans. Indeed, Sharpton and Jackson do little more than consistently portray blacks as helpless victims.
Martin Luther King, Jr., a real champion of empowering minorities and a trailblazing crusader for civil rights, consistently called upon whites to not hand preferences or freebies to blacks, but to simply afford them opportunities by which they could be empowered to high achievement. In a similar sense, the supporters of the Jena 6 should not be calling for the outright exoneration of the six black teens quite obviously guilty of assault.
Instead, they should be calling on black teens and black people around the country to rise above the racism that so many commentators don't think they can overcome. And until this message - that blacks should strive to attain equality not by portraying themselves as victims but as strong, independent, and accomplished citizens - is the one emerging from the lips of Sharpton and Jackson, we will surely remain a racially divided society in which black achievement is reflexively viewed as government-produced.
This status quo allows some disingenuous liberals to paint all minorities as victims and allows frauds like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to sustain prosperous careers in social dishonesty. Yet how will encouraging the Jena 6 - and others in the future - to feel like sympathy-deserving victims actually benefit them and set them on the path toward accomplished lives?
Brad DeFlumeri is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at bdeflume@student.umass.edu.
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